The increasing need of quality check of software applications has made the implementation of testing strategies vital. To ensure effective implementation of the testing strategies, it is of utmost importance to manage test data effectively.
There exists a plurality of problems with respect to management of the test data. With the growth in the number of software implementations in an enterprise, the amount of data required for the testing of the software implementations has increased enormously. Effective storage of the enormous test data is a major problem faced by the enterprises today. Further, the existing solutions do not provide for an effective means of archival of the test data. In the current scenario, redundant copies of the test data are created which adds to the already existing test data.
Further, the test data goes through various stages during testing phase of the software application. The life-cycle of the test data includes stages of creation, subsetting, masking, storage, archival, usage, monitoring and disposal. There exist various tools managing the test data at individual stages of the entire life-cycle of the test data. However, none of the existing tools provide a tool for the management of the test data throughout the life-cycle of the test data.
In addition, the existing solutions fail to reduce ad-hoc creation of the test data which ultimately increases the cycle time of the test data. Also, testers while testing the software application tend to use the test data already in use by another tester causing the data over-stepping. None of the existing tools provide for a solution to this problem of data over stepping.
Further, breach of data privacy is an increasing cause of concern when the test data is created by copying the data from the production environment. The privacy regulations with respect to the data differ according to domain and geographical location which makes it difficult to find sensitive data fields and protect the sensitive data.